Will Phil Davies see out his contract?

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How long is his contract? He has a team with those players at his disposal and they play like they have all season, that isn't acceptable. Get rid of him NOW and things will get better. They can not possibly get worse!

TBF to him he did lose something like 13 experienced players at the end of last year and a few more in the summer - and losing players like Blair, M Williams, G Jenkins and Rees is going to leave a mark.

However I agree, they have been shockingly poor this season and are just continuing the trend of the last few years

The Blues have never been any good,and their so called stars are selected automatically for WALES by Gatland ,as he and the media hypr/praise these waste of space so called rugby stars so much that they believe their own press.Start picking form players and Give Welsh caps on merit not friendship.

thespreys wrote:The Blues have never been any good,and their so called stars are selected automatically for WALES by Gatland ,as he and the media hypr/praise these waste of space so called rugby stars so much that they believe their own press.Start picking form players and Give Welsh caps on merit not friendship.

In fairness they have been good (HC semi, Amlin win) and have had players in form who we've subsequently picked: Warburton, Gethin, Halfpenny, Nugget, Roberts. Halfpenny is still on form and Roberts will be back to his best for Wales. Don't forget, 'spreys, that your team used to get a bit of preferential treatment too. Remember the Wales team with 13 Ospreys players in the staring line up, many of them not in the same sort of form as those in other teams?

I'd say that Halfpenny, Roberts, Jenkins and Warburton have earnt their caps...

...only if present form isn't the criteria everyone alleges it should be.

Smirnoffpriest wrote:TBF to him he did lose something like 13 experienced players at the end of last year and a few more in the summer - and losing players like Blair, M Williams, G Jenkins and Rees is going to leave a mark.

However I agree, they have been shockingly poor this season and are just continuing the trend of the last few years

It's no good saying that. Which players did they lose? Were they 13 starters? Were they any good? The majority of them, I think not. That point you have regurgitated isn't really a substantial one. Jenkins was a loss, yes. A big one. Rush and Williams should have gone a year earlier. The Blues should have filtered through their resources or looked elsewhere a lot sooner for the long term replacements for some of these guys. PD isn't responsible for that. People act like Warbs, Roberts, Cuffbutt etc aren't there. A team with these guys in it shouldn't be losing to the winless, bottom placed English team and shouldn't be shipping 59 points. That can be layed at PD's door.

Morg - just off the top of my head the players they lost could have lined up like this

Gethin Jenkins
TR Thomas
John Yapp
Deniol Jones
Paul Tito
Ma'ama Molitika
Martyn Williams
Xavier Rush

Richie Rees
Dan Parks
-
Gavin Henson
Casey Lualala
-
Ben Blair

They'll miss Jenkins, TRT, Tito the most. Ma'ama, Rush, Williams were replaced with good back-ups. Pretorious and Warburton were playing better when they came in actually. It also seems they are now missing Richie Rees. Henson didn't get a chance down to the club being run by amateurs (Lualala's words not mine). So to my original point, yes the loss of 13 players is greatly exagirated.

Morg - I absolutely agree that the Blues should have moved on the older players before and started blooding younger players - but you can't blame PD for that, and as the Blues/Young didn't blood hardly any youngsters then obviously most of those players would leave an impact as most of them were 1st choice/2nd choice in their positions. And SS even left off G Williams as well!

And while yes the Blues do have excellent players, but you act like those players should win games single-handedly, which unfortunately doesn't happen (see Scarlets 2 years ago, who had a pretty good team with stars like Rees, S Jones, JD2, King, Lamont, Stodds and Knoyle and still got hammered by Leicester).
Though Blues should be doing better, and Phil D is doing v poorly, I'd mention that Sale have some very good players as well - but not a very strong squad, same as the Blues.

Morgannwg wrote:They'll miss Jenkins, TRT, Tito the most. Ma'ama, Rush, Williams were replaced with good back-ups. Pretorious and Warburton were playing better when they came in actually. It also seems they are now missing Richie Rees. Henson didn't get a chance down to the club being run by amateurs (Lualala's words not mine). So to my original point, yes the loss of 13 players is greatly exagirated.

So you think Evans is as good as Lualua, and that Copeland is as good as Ma'ama was (as Patterson was no1 6 then Ma'ama would have been competing with him). And as such any team should be able to lose 13 experienced players and have good youngsters step up for 3 of them (Ma'ama, Rush, Williams) without any reasonable loss in performance?

Smirnoffpriest wrote:

Morgannwg wrote:They'll miss Jenkins, TRT, Tito the most. Ma'ama, Rush, Williams were replaced with good back-ups. Pretorious and Warburton were playing better when they came in actually. It also seems they are now missing Richie Rees. Henson didn't get a chance down to the club being run by amateurs (Lualala's words not mine). So to my original point, yes the loss of 13 players is greatly exagirated.

So you think Evans is as good as Lualua, and that Copeland is as good as Ma'ama was (as Patterson was no1 6 then Ma'ama would have been competing with him). And as such any team should be able to lose 13 experienced players and have good youngsters step up for 3 of them (Ma'ama, Rush, Williams) without any reasonable loss in performance?

You misunderstand. Evans has been there as long as Casey (or longer, I don't remember). So I do not count him as the 'replacement.' They have just kept their squad player in the team. I would like to see the guys like Corey Allen, Owen Williams and others given a shot though. I mentioned a few days ago they seem to be well covered in the backs, if they give these guys a chance. Copeland isn't as good as Ma'ama yet, but he does look pretty good. At 7 you have Warbs, Navidi then guys from the premiership like Young and Jenkins. Breeze and Kyriacou are pretty good from what I've seen. The props were a long-term issue though. Of course I expected a loss in performance, but looking at the last two seasons, where-as this one is worse; you expect a loss to this extent? Not me. They brought in the wrong person for this kind of job and now they need to get him out.

If you look at the team you could consider the following the core; Halfpenny, Cuthbert, Roberts, Warburton, Davies. The most expereinced guys in the team. Around these they have some decent players and some more potential Wales regulars like; Tovey, Robinson, James, Bourrust, Andrews, Breeze, Reed, Navidi, Patterson, L.Williams, Patchell. (Although you should note I don't rate all of these guys as good players, prop and scrum half I'm looking at here). You're telling me that these lot should be shipping 50 points and lose back to back games in the Heineken Cup? Baffling as to how PD can't put together a good team and train them to perform well on the pitch.

Even Sale are looking for ways to fix their problems instead of waiting for them to get worse; http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/20131910. Neither are the French afraid to do that. So why do we have to endure going backwards? Hope everyone sees my point(s) because it probably comes across as a long and angry rant.

But didn't they ship 50 points to Leinster last season with all those guys?

While I agree Phil D has done a poor job, I'm not sure where the Blues would go - I mean they couldn't afford to pay of Burnell (or was it the other one) so I very much doubt they can afford to pay off Phil after a quarter of a season AND have money (Which Sale have a lot more of) to go out and bring in a good coach.

I agree with your point that the Blues are poor and getting poorer (though apologies if I have missed your point) - and haven been since their Amlin win. They really needed to invest in their youth at that point so that there were players taking over from Tito, Rush, Lualua, Ma'ama ect when those players started going down hill - it could also have given them a good 10 to avoid the waste of money they had on SNK, and them relying on Sweeney (whose poor) as an alternative.

But I'd say it's a bit unfair to compare them to what French teams are doing when a French Div 1 team could out bid the Blues for Bennett

They did, it was like 51-12 or something. What are you getting at? that it's okay to do it two years on the bounce?

No I'm not entirely sure how these things work, or what the contract says. Surely it should say performance/results based in there somewhere! Or that's wishful thinking. And are you sure they were outbid for Bennett? He could have took it as an opporunity to live in France for a few years. I know I would, wonderful country.

I hope Phil can pick himself back up sooner rather than later. As he'll need to do that before he can work on his team. P.S, do you know how long his contract is?

No definately not - the 1st time was awful, but I was just pointing out that it's hardly outlandish for the loss to happen a 2nd time with an even weaker team at a coaches disposal.

I suppose that's true, Bennett could have gone for those reasons, and a chance to play rugby in a different environment - but you'd think maybe the pull of HEC and top flight rugby may have kept him in Wales - I'm just hypothosising though.

I'm with you - I hope Phil can turn things around, but I don't think he will. And while he's a problem, he's definately not the only one and there's a lot of deep problems with the Blues.

Soz - forgot to answer your question, no not sure how long his contract is - but I'd assume it's for at least 2 years?

I think Bennet is quite happy with 50 caps and is now easing back, kinda like Shane is playing 2nd division in Japan.

Debatable if this years team that was thrashed is weaker than last years; http://www.leinsterrugby.ie/matchcentre/match_centre.php?section=lineups&fixid=158954. That was on B&B's hands at the time, due to their ponderous selections and decisions. As is this years result on PD's hands.

Yeah I suppose your very right, I'd forgotten how poor that team was last year - interestingly though all the best players from that team have gone, and all the best players from this years team were missing from that one.

No matter what the ins and outs are of whether PD is up to the job (he isn't), it is just NOT GOOD ENOUGH for the capital city of our nation to be getting humped home and away on a regular basis. Where is the pride? we seem too satisfied mith mediocrity at regional level.

tatterd wrote:No matter what the ins and outs are of whether PD is up to the job (he isn't), it is just NOT GOOD ENOUGH for the capital city of our nation to be getting humped home and away on a regular basis. Where is the pride? we seem too satisfied mith mediocrity at regional level.

To be honest the fact they are based in Cardiff should have no impact on it at all. They are the second/third region, and to be fair I can't really remember a time when they were the dominant force in Welsh rugby (that said I can only really remember a few year prior to regionalism), but I can remember them finish as the worst of the regions a few years on the trot, and Dai kept his job.

I haven't bothered to read through but imo there needs to be a wholesale clearout at the Blues. Like there's been with the Brumbies and Reds in super rugby.

Getting rid of Phil D and getting another average journeyman coach will do nothing.

There's something rotten to the core, and the players needed aren't being developed.

They've already lost 15 players - if they have another big clear out then as well as bringing through the youngsters they'll also need a large shopping spree as well!

I think the problem is that they can only afford journey men to complement their youngsters and star players, and some of the youngsters aren't quite ready and they haven't got enough to 1. Take over in the 1st team and then also 2. be the squad players as well, so when the 1st team youngsters are injured, need to be rested, are off form, there's another up and coming youngster ready to take their place.

This is mainly because the Blues mostly neglected their youth for about 3 seasons and relied on NWQ players and experienced WQ players, in a few seasons I reckon they'll be pumping out quite a few more youngsters.

Smirnoffpriest wrote:They've already lost 15 players - if they have another big clear out then as well as bringing through the youngsters they'll also need a large shopping spree as well!

I think the problem is that they can only afford journey men to complement their youngsters and star players, and some of the youngsters aren't quite ready and they haven't got enough to 1. Take over in the 1st team and then also 2. be the squad players as well, so when the 1st team youngsters are injured, need to be rested, are off form, there's another up and coming youngster ready to take their place.

This is mainly because the Blues mostly neglected their youth for about 3 seasons and relied on NWQ players and experienced WQ players, in a few seasons I reckon they'll be pumping out quite a few more youngsters.

I meant at management/behind the scenes level. Getting rid of the journeymen and guys who just aren't good enough to play pro rugby (Campese) might help though...

Well it would help if you had anyone better to bring in - and I suppose that's the whole (depressing) point for the Blues, you could get rid of P Davies, and some journeymen players but I doubt you got the funds to bring in anyone better, so there'd seem little point.

But on the bright side, it was always going to be a difficult season with a lot of money going on getting the Blues out of the CCS, but they'll only get better in seasons to come with the youngsters coming through and as long as their current fans can stay with them, then more should come as more and more home grown players come through.